


never drill for oil on a city street

by jugheadjones



Series: don't leave me hanging on the telephone [1]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Crushes, F/M, Feelings, High School, Lies and Deception, Riverparents, Unrequited Love, enemies to frenemies to lovers, parentdale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-26
Updated: 2017-09-26
Packaged: 2019-01-05 22:22:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12198564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jugheadjones/pseuds/jugheadjones
Summary: When Mary starts working at Project Youth - a confidential hotline for teens, by teens - Fred Andrews is the last person she expects to phone in. The whole fucking school kisses his ass; what could he possibly have to talk to counselors about?You're supposed to hand the phone off to someone else if there's a conflict of interest, but it's not like Fred counts, right? After all, Mary can't stand the guy.





	never drill for oil on a city street

Mary arrives for her Project Youth shift four minutes early, sheds her winter coat, and takes a seat at the counter in front of the phones. She carefully lines up two pens beside her notebook, and lays a third across the top. If it was a slow call day, she could dig into some of the algebra homework she had stashed in her bag, but she was on top of it enough that she wouldn’t have to.

Mary’s mother had helped co-found Project Youth: a volunteer-run confidential hotline for troubled teens. The hours were erratic, the funding tenuous, but it was friendly and important and full of caring people. Mary worked there on Wednesdays and Thursdays, answering phones from kids who were looking for a friendly voice. She always felt calm and grown-up there, like it was where she was meant to be. Of all her extra-curriculars, Project Youth was the one she looked forward to the most.

Some of the calls weren’t easy, but she was level-headed enough to take care of them. She was the youngest volunteer there, but the others trusted her, and it gave her a tough feeling of security and strength.

“Mary, can you get that one?” Amy asks her as a phone begins to ring. “I’m on my break until four.”

Mary gives her a thumbs up and reaches for the receiver. “Project Youth,” she answers warmly, flipping open to a new page in her notebook. They had a manual of key phrases for newbies, but for the most part the teen hotline didn’t use scripts. _Just listen_ , her boss Cynthia always urged them. _Be yourself. Listening is the best thing you can do to help._

“Um, hi.” The male voice on the other end sounds startled. First time caller, Mary notes. “I - I’m alone in the house, and I need to talk to someone - is that okay?”

She can hear the faintest wet catch in his voice, like he might have just finished crying. Sad, but not in immediate danger. It doesn’t bother her: Mary’s good at talking to criers. Mostly they’re looking for reassurance and advice, and she’s impartial enough to give both well.

“That’s why we’re here,” she says reassuringly, settling in for the long haul and slipping her shoes off under her desk. “What can I-”

“My name is Fred, by the way,” he hurries in, and the bottom drops abruptly out of her stomach. “Fred Andrews.”

“Fred-” she cuts him off, heart doing an uncomfortable little pitch downward. Fred _Andrews_? Calling here? Why?“We’re an, um - an anonymous hotline.”

“A what?”

 _Anonymous_ , Fred. The word you learned in the second fucking grade? Meaning _don’t tell me it’s you calling, I don’t want to know!_

Mary stares at the button in front of her, the one you’re supposed to press if a conflict of interest comes on the line. It alters one of the other staff, who come to take over for you. But did Fred Andrews really count? They were hardly _friends_. Fred didn’t have any idea she worked here. She knew FP better, if anything, and not by much.

_It’s still none of my business what he needs to talk about._

Okay, but hitting that button would be admitting she cared. Indulging that little tickle of concern that had settled in her ribcage. But Fred was nothing to her, just a classmate. So he’d asked her out once, _whoop-de-doo_. There wasn’t a breathing female at Riverdale High that Fred hadn’t asked out at some point or another. Mary had helped a ton of other people on the hotline from RHS, and there was nothing wrong with that. She was never going to see them again: they were graduating that year, for crying out loud.

 _I don’t give a fuck_ , she tells herself firmly in her head, and answers his question. “It means we don’t ask for your name.”

“Oh.” He’s silent for a moment. “Then how do I know who I’m-”

 _You don’t_ , she thinks, with wry, absurd hilarity. “My name’s Erin,” she lies. 

“Hi Erin.”

It’s almost funny just because they’ve gotten on so poorly all their lives. If this was a teen movie, this would be the part where he spills everything about his home life - which, naturally, would be desperately bad - and tells her he’s on the brink. And then bam, she’d fall in love with him, and _save_ him, and an 80s love song would play and roll credits. It was all so classic. _Say Anything Part Two Starring Fred and Mary._ Well, Mary is not going to be a cliche.

She reaches out and hovers her index finger over the blue button, but hesitates. It’s been a low staff day, and Amy is on her break. Jiaying is probably taking another call. If she calls for help now, Fred could be waiting awhile to talk to someone else. And he’s in tears.

_And what does that say about you if you hit the panic button? It says you can’t deal with it, that’s what. It says he’s got under your skin. It says you’re scared to hear him cry. That he’s more than just a classmate to you._

She softens her voice slightly, just enough for her to pray he won’t recognize it. She hopes none of her co-workers can hear her. She feels like a class A idiot. “Why don’t you tell me what’s wrong, Fred?”

A long silence, and she hears his breath shivering slightly on the other end. A thought flashes into her mind, one that should have tossed up the red flag telling her to hit that button after all. _Dear God please don’t tell me you’re cutting yourself or something like that, I don’t want to know. I really, really, really don’t want to know._

“I’m in love with this girl, and I don’t know how to tell her.”

 _Oh, for fuck’s sake._ Typical Fred bullshit. Mary’s gearing up to give him an earful - it’s going to start with _Fred Andrews, do you realize that there are people out there in real trouble that are counting on this hotline to help them while you’re wasting everyone’s time_ , which she thinks is suitably self-righteous while also brutal enough to cut to the bone - when she feels herself pause. If she goes haywire on Fred now, he’ll want to know why the hell she lied to him in the first place.

“Shit and crap”, she mutters disconsolately, racking her brains for an explanation. None appears to her. What could you possibly tell someone about why you’d broken the hotline rules to spy on their personal life? What could she tell Project Youth if Fred got angry enough to call back and tell them how one of their phone operators had breached the privacy agreement?

Fred was annoying but he was no snitch - he wouldn’t deliberately get her in trouble. But assuming he did tell Project Youth she’d misled him? Mary is an extremely ethical person - she’s going to law school for fuck’s sake. She hasn’t compromised her personal ethics since Hermione had talked her into shoplifting a pen in the eighth grade, and even then she’d felt so bad that she’d come back later, paid for one, and left it on the counter.

People’s emotional damages aren’t pens, though: this kind of thing is a serious offence. What if it keeps her out of law school? Goes on her permanent record? At the very least she’d be fired, and all for what? For Fred fucking Andrews and his babyshit girl problems? Mary screws her eyes shut. How had he so quickly and so effectively put her in this situation?

Fine. _Fine._ She’d finish the call, tell him to spill the beans to whoever his cheerleader-of-the-week was, and hang up. He’d be none the wiser. She could get on with her day and pretend this had never happened. The thought of that future is so tantalizing that it spurs her immediately into action.

“That’s a tough one,” she tells him kindly, wondering who the girl is. Her fake voice sounds like a talking Barbie doll: the kind of syrupy, indulgent voice that wives put on for their husbands in old movies. _And how was your day, honey? Do you want to sit down, put your feet up? Can I kiss your bootheels?_ “Do you think she likes you back?”

“No.” He laughs in a hoarse, miserable way. “Do you go to Riverdale High?”

“Central,” she says immediately in her Barbie voice, sweat breaking out on her forehead. Their rival is the first thing she can think of.

“Hey, we beat you guys in basketball last week,” says Fred cheerfully, a merciful lack of suspicion in his voice. Then he pauses. “Sorry. That was uncalled for. I just thought of that. Were you at the game?”

 _Yes or no? Yes or no? Yes or no?_ “Yes,” she blurts out, before she can stop herself, and then winces.

“Cheering, or just watching?”

Oh, because he probably had been scoping out the cheerleaders too. Especially at Central - they’ve been in trouble twice already with the school board since she’s been here for having the skimpiest cheerleading uniforms in the district. Open-midriff, skirts barely above their asses. It drove Alice and Hermione bazonka. Her urge to just yell at Fred and hang up doubles.

“Just watching,” she offers through gritted teeth. Mary had heard a rumour Central High didn’t let redheads on the squad, because their hair clashed with the Central red. But there was no use lending credibility to this particular rumor in case it wasn’t true.

“You must have seen me, then.” he says enthusiastically, “I was number fourteen.”

Mary swallows an urge to tell him she’d noticed number fourteen had played the sloppiest game on the court. The less he’d remember about this conversation, the better. Also, had Fred slept through the third grade class where they’d learned the meaning of the word _confidential_? She could probably get this idiot to give her his social security number without fuss.

“My boyfriend’s on the team,” Mary says, before she can stop herself, because the sooner Fred got it through his thick head that this particular hotline operator was taken, the better. But Fred seems unfazed.

“What’s his name?”

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Stay cool, Mary. Don’t blow it. She racks her brains for the names of Central players, and FP’s voice comes to her like an angel of mercy

_Fred, if you have to go up against McAllister for the jump ball, don’t try to go offensive. We’ve practiced for it. Just do what you can, and we’ll keep it out of the basket._

Who knew that eating her egg-salad sandwich while they hollered sports mumbo-jumbo at each other would save her life. “McAllister,” she says quickly.

“You’re dating Lance?”

 _Lance McAllister_. How were these people real? Mary could never date a man named Lance. No way, no how. “Yes,” she lies, and stares accusingly at the CONFLICT OF INTEREST button. If only. Amy or Jiaying could be talking to this goober right now.

“Fred, how about you?” she asks, in her whisper-girly voice, before he can tell her anything she doesn’t want to hear about Lance McAllister’s biceps or something. “You said there was this girl.”

She hears him swallow on the other line. “I dunno, I feel kind of dumb calling in about it now. I know this is for real emergencies and stuff.”

 _Ding ding ding_ , she thinks sarcastically, but doesn’t let it bleed into her good-girl hotline voice. “That’s okay, Fred. We’re here to listen.”

(Dinner’s in the oven, sweetie! I made your favourite, meatloaf!)

“It’s just that -” His pause seems to take an eternity. “I’ve never felt like this about anyone before.”

 _Sure, I’ll buy that_ , thinks Mary sarcastically. Fred falls in love left, right, centre and backwards. Mary can count on one hand the number of girlfriends she has that haven’t heard those three magic words from Fred’s lips at some point or another - usually preceded by those world famous bonus two, _I think_ . The worst part is that she knows he _does_ think. Fred could get run over by a school bus and he’d believe with his whole heart that he was in love with the driver. The boy was helpless. He was like a newborn deer.

_Be impartial, Mary. Be fair. If you didn’t know that, what would you say to him?_

“And you don’t think she feels the same way?” she asks patiently. For god’s sake, this kid was up in arms about nothing. Riverdale High was dripping with girls who wanted to be with him. Fred could have any girl he wanted.

“I know she doesn’t.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“She thinks I’m a total jerk.” He sounds, for the first time since she’s known him, completely defeated. “She’s told me that. She says I’m flaky, and immature, and in love with myself, and she wouldn’t go out with me if I was the last person on the planet.”

Mary thinks she’d like to meet this girl. They’d probably get on like wildfire.

“Well, do you think you are?”

“Are what?”

“A total jerk.”

“No. Well-” He sounds uncomfortable, almost shy. “I can see why she’d think that about me. And I’ve been trying to prove her wrong, but-”

A shaky breath, then, one that swallows the rest of the sentence. “Look, I don’t want to sound cocky, but I’m popular at school. Not, like, _really_ popular, but people like me. I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t like me. But this girl, she just- she doesn’t like me. And she’s so much smarter than me, and I feel like she’s seeing the real me somehow and I’m not a good person. Does that make sense? I don’t know. But I feel like an idiot around her.”

Mary’s started to get a bad feeling deep down inside her. An _I took a pen I haven't paid for_ feeling. This was wrong, what she was doing. This was very wrong, no matter _how_ annoying Fred was of a person, no matter _how_ worried she was about losing her job. She was eavesdropping on someone’s private feelings. She was misleading them so that she could keep doing it. And she was pretending like it was all for their benefit. Nibbling guiltily at a hangnail, she sends up a quick prayer that no one ever finds out about this. Least of all Fred.

“Maybe I’m just not used to people not thinking I’m funny, you know?” He sounds close to tears again. “And it sucks, because this is the one time in my life I’ve ever wanted someone to like me. The one time it actually, really matters.”

_Why the fuck did I do this? Why the fuck did I tell him my name was Erin?_

“Maybe you’re only interested in her because she doesn’t give you the time of day,” offers Mary. “Sometimes people want what they can’t have.”

“I’ve thought of that. But it’s not true. The more I think about it the more I know it’s not true. You’d understand if you met her. She’s just so wonderful.”

Mary probably _has_ met her, but can’t for the life of her figure out who he’s talking about. It’s not Hermione, that’s for sure. It’s weird, because something he’d said sounded so familiar too. That thing about being - what was it? Flaky.

“Have you thought about telling her how you feel?”

“No. I’d mess it up. I just get so nervous around her,” he admits. “I mess everything up.”

 _You and me both, Freddie_ , she thinks grimly, twisting the phone cord around her wrist. _I’ve messed up big time now._ “Tell me more about her.”

“Well, her name’s Mar-” He stops short. “Wait, can I tell you her name?”

NO, her mind screams. _Do not tell me, Fred. Do not, do not, I repeat - do not tell me. Do not finish that fucking sentence._

Meredith, he was going to say Meredith. There’s a Meredith in their biology class. Dark hair, long legs. Fred’s type. That was all. If she thinks about it, she can even see it. Wasn’t Fred always distracted in biology? Didn’t she always see him anxiously combing his hair in the reflective front of the microscope cabinet next to his desk?

“Sure,” she hears herself say into the phone, still using that silvery, patient girl-voice. “You can tell me her name.”

“Well,” he begins again, “-her name’s Mary.”

She almost hangs up. Maybe she could pretend they’d had a bad connection. Only then he’d phone back wanting to talk to Erin, and what the fuck would she do then?

“Mary-” she says, her voice so high and girlish that she knows she must be overdoing it, that he must be putting two and two together by now. There was no way anyone could find this register believable. But Fred has a head thicker than a bowling ball, and just sits patiently on the other side of the line, waiting for her to tell him what to do. About his stupid hopeless crush on Mary. On her.

Mary is a common name, the _most_ common, maybe. There must be more than one Mary at RHS. But she supposes that doesn’t matter, because she can remember it now: facing Fred down in the hallway and telling him that she wouldn’t go out with him if he were the last person on planet Earth. Calling him flaky, too. And what was that last one? Immature?

“What makes you like her so much, Fred?”

“Love her,” he corrects in a whisper, and she really almost hangs up then, has to force herself not to slam the receiver down. She feels

( _in love with yourself, that’s what she’d said_ )

his embarrassment even through the phone line, the vibrating anxiety in the empty space of his breathing. “Sorry, I mean, I think I _love_ her.” He says the words with a kind of hushed awe. “Just ‘cause she makes me feel these things I’ve never felt before. And I feel like everything she does makes me like her more. I’m in- I’m in really deep, to be honest.”

 _Jesus, Fred, do you think you could be a little less honest?_ Mary wonders. Out loud, she says: “But what is it that attracts you to her? Do you know?”

To her surprise, Fred has an answer ready. “Sure. She’s really - she’s got guts, you know? She stands up for what she believes in. And she’s so _smart_ , but she’s always doing good stuff too, like environment projects, and recycling drives, and food drives, and clothes drives, and well, you name it.”

 _Volunteering at youth hotlines_ , Mary adds silently. “Go on.”

“She’s just, like, generous. And she’s really kind and funny and, I don’t know, organized. And she’s so interesting, and full of life, and I just want to be around her all the time. She wants kids, too. The other day I heard her say she’d think about naming her son Archibald one day. Isn’t that the coolest name you’ve ever heard?”

Mary’s not sure _cool_ is what she’d use to describe it, but she feels a tickle of validation at his enthusiasm. When she’d mentioned to Alice that she liked the name, Alice had looked at her like she had three heads. Big talk coming from someone named Alice!

“It’s certainly unique.”

He laughs. “It’s not for everyone. But that’s how cool she is. She doesn’t care. A bunch of her ancestors had that name, and they were all activists and plane-builders and stuff like that. So it’s a family name.”

“I guess you could shorten it to Arch.”

“Arch or Archie, yeah.”

Exactly, thinks Mary, triumphant. Arch or Archie, so there, Alice.

Oh, for fuck’s sake. Did she and Fred Andrews actually agree on something?

“Fred, I'm going to tell you something that might be kind of hard to hear. Is that ok?”

“Yeah, that's okay.” Fuck, if only he didn't sound so _trusting_ , so eager. She can picture him chewing on his lip by the phone, gazing up into the distance with those big puppy-dog eyes. Waiting on her to solve all his problems. Or break his heart.

“This girl doesn't owe you anything. If she doesn't like you back, she can't help that any more than you can help how much you feel for her. And if you try and try to get her to like you, you might get a happy ending, but it won't necessarily be that for her. These things go both ways.”

He’s quiet for a bit, and she’s worried momentarily that he’s hung up on her. Of all the ways to let someone down easy, using a fake identity on a hotline for troubled youth had to be the weirdest. But he’s still there.

“You’re right,” he says finally. “No, you’re right. She doesn’t have to like me back. I guess I just don’t want her to go on thinking I’m such a jerk.”

Mary stares at her shoes. “Have you tried talking to her?”

“She’d never believe me. I just get really nervous around her, you know? Besides, she’s going away for law school in two years. And then for the rest of her life she’ll just remember me as some asshole.”

“That's a ways away, still.” _And she probably doesn’t even know where she’s going_ , she adds silently. _For law school or anything. At all._

“I guess so.” Fred swallows. “I mean, I can try telling her. But I think she’d just laugh at me.”

Mary glares distrustfully at the CONFLICT OF INTEREST button. “Maybe it will help to write down what you want to say.” That one was right out of Cynthia’s Project Youth bible. She’s lost track of how many kids she’s told to write their feelings down. But Fred’s answer surprises her.

“I’ve tried,” he moans. “I write her corny letters all the time. But the only time I ever got the guts to send her one she tore it up in the middle of the hallway.”

Aw, crap, she had, too. Ripped the lavender coloured paper into smithereens. More for show than anything: she hadn’t even read it. Hadn’t considered that he might have laboured over it, that it wasn’t all a goof for his buddies, or an elaborate plot to get on her every last nerve before he graduated.

“I’ll try again, I guess,” says Fred, with the resignation of a man headed to the gallows. “Thanks for listening. It actually really helped to talk about it.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Her chirpy fake voice is fading, and she clears her throat nervously. “I hope everything works out.”

“Hey, if I call back sometime, will I talk to you again?”

Mary thinks fast. “Um, this is actually my last day.”

“Oh.” She can hear his smile through the line, that nervous, goofy grin he has. “Hope I’m not keeping you late.”

“No, you’re not.” she reassures him.

“Okay. Sorry I took up so much of your time.”

“You didn’t.”

“Right. Well, bye.”

“Bye,” she echoes quietly, feeling the glaring inadequacy of her farewell. She hadn’t done her job, really. She hadn’t pushed him toward the discovery of any concrete success strategy.

“But how could I?” she says out loud to the empty office. “How could I when it was such a goddamn conflict of interest?”

The empty office doesn’t answer. Mary slides out of her seat and slips her shoes back onto her feet. She needs to take a breather. If she takes a walk to the water fountain out in the hallway, she can still hear the phones.

“Tough phone call?” Jiaying asks her when she crosses her path on the way out the door. Mary guesses she must see it in her eyes.

No, she begins to say, because in the grand scheme of things it hadn’t been _that_ bad, not compared to some of the calls they were trained to deal with. But then she just takes a deep breath and admits it.

“Jiaying,” she says, “you have no _fucking_ idea.”    


**Author's Note:**

> "project youth" is borrowed from another suburban utopia teen series, if you know which one we're going to be friends forever 
> 
> **EDIT:** There's not enough Mary/Fred out in the world so I've written a companion piece [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14305338). Please give it a read and a comment! 
> 
> if you leave a comment, fred might finally tell mary how he feels about her


End file.
